The long haul
Before the game on Opening Night, Joe Strauss published in the Post Dispatch an interesting admission by Atlanta Braves general manager John Schuerholz. Asked to name the game’s “current power teams,” Schuerholz listed the Yankees, his own Braves, and the Cardinals. Referring to St. Louis, he said, “No question, they’ve developed into an elite franchise.”
Even readers who do not scoff at the remark may take it with a grain of salt. After all, this is the GM of a team that lost 83 games last year admitting a team that won just 83 into his own “elite” club.
Yet, of course, Schuerholz chose the words “elite franchise” in order to refer beyond last year’s rosters. He could have been suggesting, accurately enough, that over the last seven years the Cardinals have dominated their division nearly as completely as the Braves had controlled theirs for fourteen; that, in those spans of time, St. Louis has won as many world championships as Atlanta; or that, of all active managers, only Tony LaRussa has won more games than Bobby Cox. At the very least, he was acknowledging that, of all National League teams this millenium, only the Cards have accrued more actual and pythagorean wins than the Braves—as our own Pip has demonstrated nicely.
Over the long haul, in other words, the Cardinals have turned into the sort of team that the Braves have been, at least until last season: one that stays on top of the standings, keeps showing up in October, and, if only because it makes more chances for itself, occasionally wins it all.
If such consistent success isn’t the goal of a baseball team, then the goal necessarily becomes unsustainable success, and the Cards and Braves can start envying the Marlins and Mariners, or even the Cubs or the Mets.
If the Mets don’t envy the Braves, that’s a recent development. For they have had a long time to look up at the likes of Atlanta and their cross-town rivals, punctuated by pretty inconsistent success. To put this more positively, the Mets’ recent accomplishment is most impressive in the context of the Braves’ 14-year stranglehold on the NL East: New York disrupted, and may have ended, Atlanta’s dynasty.
Likewise, if a division rival overtakes the Cardinals this year, it will have not only beaten an 83-win team that somehow backed into a world championship. It will have bested the National League’s best team so far this millenium.
If such an NL Central team emerges this year, however, it is quite unlikely that it will proceed to take this distinction from the Cardinals, or to match the Cards’ success over the long haul.